Doris Lessing, 50 years ago:
“The novel is the only popular art-form left where the artist speaks directly, in clear words, to his audience…. The novelist talks as an individual to individuals, in a small personal voice. In an age of committee art, public art, people any begin to feel again a need for the small personal voice; and this will feed confidence into writers and, with confidence because of the knowledge of being needed, the warmth and humanity, and love of people which is essential for a great age of literature.”
A couple of hours ago, Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The story in the New York Times noted that, at the time of writing, her agent didn’t know whether she had heard the news, since she was still out, shopping.
Could the author of The Golden Notebook be the first laureate to actually have her own website?
John Nery | Newsstand 